Advising and Retention Quotes

4) "Advising is a key to student retention. The best way to keep students enrolled is to keep them stimulated, challenged and progressing toward a meaningful goal. The best way to do that--especially among new students--is through informed academic advising."

Anderson, Edward "Chip". (1997). Academic Advising for Student Success and Retention. Noel-Levitz, Iowa City, IA.

5) "Good advising may be the single most underestimated characteristic of a successful college experience."

Light, R.J. (2001) Making the most of college. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

6) If students are to succeed in college and in life, the principles of developmental advising must be considered essential to all phases of the institution. "Advising cannot be done in isolation. This process must be integrated among all constituents of the institution" (Grites, 1979, p. 6). Advisors are in a unique position to champion and monitor this integration.

As quoted: Miller, Marsha A. and Alberts, Bonnie. Developmental Advising: Where Teaching and Learning Intersect. NACADA Journal, 1994, 14(2): 43-45.

Original Quote: Grites, T. (1979). Academic advising: Getting Us through the Eighties. In D. Crockett (Ed.) Advising skills, techniques, and resources: A compilation of materials related to the organization and delivery of advising services (pp. 5-7). Iowa City, IA: ACT.

7) Beal and Noel (1980), reporting on a joint project of the American College Testing Program and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, identified "inadequate academic advising " as the greatest impediment to student retention. From a positive perspective, a "caring attitude of faculty and staff" was the strongest positive correlate with persistence. Forrest (1982) points to the efficacy of academic advising for achieving general education objectives and increasing student persistence: "the single most important move an institution can make to increase student persistence to graduation is to ensure that students receive the guidance they need at the beginning of the journey through college."

An analysis of available data from a pre-SAC ESU student cohort and the SAC-influenced cohort suggests that the four-year retention rate has been increased by 8.0 percentage points. Because no discernible treatment variable exists other than the presence of a centralized student advising service which practices intrusive advising, one may conclude that the services of the Student Advising Center have measurably affected the persistence of entering students at Emporia State University. The salient finding of this analysis corroborates the retention literature, and suggests one strategy which institutions might pursue to increase the retention of matriculants.

Backhus, DeWayne.(1989). Centralized Intrusive Advising and Undergraduate Retention. NACADA Journal, 9(1): 39-45.

Original Quote: Beal, P. E., and Noel, Lee (1980). What Works in Student Retention. Iowa City, IA: The American College Testing Program, pp. 43 and 45.

Original Quote: Forrest, A. (1982). Increasing student competence and persistence. Iowa City, IA: The American College Testing National Center for Advancement of Education Practices, p. 44.

8) Advising's place in the national debate in retention began with Beal and Noel's 1979 publication What Works in Student Retention, which reported that poor advising was a significant reason for learning college, and a significant relationship with someone at school was found to be most important in retention. While institutional integration has since been more broadly defined to address both social and academic connections with the college (Tinto, 1990), the presumptive link between advising and retention remains. Greater faculty-student contact and sound academic advising have been seen as the core of campus retention efforts (for example, Beasley-Fielstein, 1986; Clark, 1989). However, the vast majority of subsequent studies have used wither single-institution samples, small samples, or both, critically masking institution differences in the impact of faculty on retention (Terenzini and other, 1981). Since 1979, only one study has contradicted the conclusion that correlations between improved advising services and retention are causative (Mark and Romano, 1982).

McGillin, Victoria A. (2000). Current Issues in Advising Research, in Gordon, Habley and Associates, Academic Advising: A Comprehensive Handbook. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

9) In an address to the 1988 NACADA Convention, Dr. Vincent Tinto of Syracuse University stressed that "all effective retention programs have effective advising at their very core." Tinto maintained that effective advising programs had to be the core of any institutional efforts at the education and retention of students. He placed great emphasis on the need for frequent and rewarding contact between faculty, staff, and students outside the formal confines of the classroom.

Flickinger, Sr. Grace Mary, S.B.S. (1995) Xavier University Chemistry Department Advisors' Manual as retrieved 12/08/04.

10) "A major factor in increasing student retention rates is the establishment of advising systems which take into account the developmental and academic needs of the students as well as career counseling."

Clark, E. (1989). The importance of a comprehensive advising system in improving student retention and graduation rates. Australian Universities' Review No. 1 1989 p 27

11) "How then should we restructure the first year of college? What would be the distinguishing characteristics that would best promote student persistence? .Second, academic advising should be an integral part of the first-year experience, not an adjunct to it. Advising should be woven into the fabric of the freshman year in ways that promote student development and that provide clear, consistent, and accurate information that is easily accessible to students. It should reflect the best professional knowledge of the day. Quite simply, good advising should not be left to chance."

Tinto, Vincent.(1999). Taking Retention Seriously: Rethinking the First Year of College. NACADA Journal, 19(1): 5-9.

12) Frequent faculty-student contact in and out of the classroom is the most important factor in student motivation and involvement.

Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson, Eds, (1995)The Seven Principles in Action: Improving Undergraduate Education. Anker Publishing Co.

13) Frequent interaction with faculty related more strongly to satisfaction than any other type of involvement or characteristic of the student or the institution.

Astin, A.W., (1985) Achieving Educational Excellence. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

14) Academic advisors mediate the dissonance between what students expect from the educational environment and what they experience in that environment.

Habley, Wes. (1981). "Academic Advising: Critical Link in Student Retention." NASPA Journal, 28(4):45-50.

15) Effective retention programs have come to understand that academic advising is the very core of successful institutional efforts to educate and retain students.

Tinto, Vincent. (1987). Increasing student retention. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

16) The cost of recruiting one new student to college approximates the cost of retaining 3-5 already enrolled students.

Noel, Levitz, & Saluri. (1985); Rosenberg & Czepiel. (1983); Tinto. (1975).

Astin, A.W. (1993). What matters in college? San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (1991). How college affects students: Findings and insights from twenty years of research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures for student attrition (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

17) The 2002 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) data reveal that students reporting the highest degree of satisfaction with the quality of their academic advisement were most likely to demonstrate the highest levels of student engagement. Since high levels of student engagement (involvement) have been found to be empirically associated with higher rates of student retention (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Tinto, 1993; Astin, 1993), the strong relationship between level of student engagement and quality of academic advisement revealed in the latest NSSE research may be interpreted as providing additional evidence of an empirical link between academic advisement and student retention.

John Gardner (2003) as quoted by Joe Cuseo on the First-Year Assessment List FYA-LIST@listserv.SC.EDU , 02/05/03